


Death and the Maiden

by aurora_borealis



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Horror, fem kimblee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 10:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30020241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_borealis/pseuds/aurora_borealis
Summary: Sola J. Kimblee lives in a dying town where she practices alchemy in secret, until she is sent to a North City finishing school.The shadows come with her.
Kudos: 4





	Death and the Maiden

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for references to suicide and discussion of sexual abuse and trafficking.

Almost nobody goes to finishing school anymore. It’s an outdated and fading industry anyway, with the North City Young Ladies’ Academy being only one of the few of its kind still running in the country. And yet Sola was _fortunate_ enough to be accepted on scholarship. The school is for girls of ages eighteen to twenty-one, somewhat like a college. Sola is nineteen, and she supposes if it gets her away from this place, she will take it. It wasn’t even her idea, it was her mother’s, but she didn’t really have any better ideas, so she supposes she can’t complain.

“You’re pretty enough, Sola. As long as you are, that’s worth something,” her mother, Jarmira (where she got her middle name) had told her. Worth being the key word. Theirs had never been a wealthy household, to say the very least, even when her father was around. She supposes leaving was the best option he could have imagined, and she doesn’t begrudge him it. After all, if he’d stayed, who knows what ills would have occurred. Her mother lamented his leaving, and Sola often suspected her mother resented her for her father leaving. After all, he did leave this falling-apart house because of her.

“Drachmans,” he’d told her once, “don’t give up.” So maybe she does take after her heritage after all, because she’s certainly not one to give up. Perhaps her father had not given up by leaving, but merely moved on. Perhaps he had never thought he could alter who she was in the first place.

A finishing school educates a young lady for the purposes of finding a wealthy enough man with a good name. Someone important in the military, a businessman, perhaps even an alchemist of good standing. Sola is very much aware of this, and what “entering society,” as the brochures say, truly means and is meant to lead to. “Society” is very far away- physically and metaphorically- from her and her mother’s small house on the outskirts of North City. Gray Pond Town, specifically.

Gray Pond Town is not looked upon as a good place. The census takers rarely come, and most maps do not point it out as a part of North City, as if it is not even a place at all. When people do remember it is a part of North City, it is referred to as the town’s worst slum. It is assumed that within a few generations it will be abandoned, a ghost town. The air is polluted from the factories that are open, causing widespread lung disease, and most of the factories have long since been abandoned anyway. The open ones are badly managed and sites of horrific accidents; workers getting their fingers and hair stuck in machines, mangled and infected and dismembered, the owners not caring. There is also a brewery, but it is not a successful one. Life expectancy is low, and few people move there, save for some Drachmans who did not know North City well enough to choose a place of better opportunity. Gray Pond Town is far from most of the rest of North City, mostly surrounded by empty lots of land and barren fields where nothing can grow. The Gray Pond itself is small, but very deep. There are some edible fish in it, but the amount of drownings and thus bodies in the pond leaves people mostly unwilling to fish there. There are many suicides. Perhaps the most notable place in Gray Pond Town is Madame Antonia’s sporting house. Some of the girls are Drachman, some Amestrian-born, and none of them treated particularly well by the wealthy Madame who makes her immense sums of money from them. She doesn’t charge that much, though some patrons come from outside of Gray Pond Town, some are local- some are even the authorities. Sometimes there will be a girl on the balcony who is not there the next day. Sometimes she will turn up dead, or sometimes she will never turn up at all, but the authorities never do anything. There are train tracks going through Gray Pond Town, but no stops, as if to serve as a reminder. Gray Pond Town is perhaps the furthest thing from “society” in North City.

No one knows Sola in “society.” She could be anyone. This is probably another worthwhile investment, in her mother’s eyes. People walking down their road cross the street to get far away as they can from their small house. People whisper in town, in stores, but not too quietly.

Her mother hates it. Sola can tell. They don’t often have deep, personal conversations, but she understands. She doesn’t particularly like being the subject of the gossip, but at least people don’t really act on it. It’s not as if anyone’s running them out of town.

This is probably the most mutually beneficial way to get rid of her, Sola thinks. It wouldn’t be too hard to kick her out into the streets or sell her off to Madame Antonia’s sporting house, and her mother certainly could use some of that woman’s money. Although her mother would know Sola would definitely fight anyone who tried to make her go along, if it ever came to that. She’s walked by Madame Antonia’s business enough times to see the girls on the balcony, most of them are said to have come there not by their own choice. Madame Antonia, with her four Drachman bodyguards and her jewels and her fast car and her mansion, one of the only people with wealth in Gray Pond Town.

Her mother isn’t a harmful person. That is something Sola respects about her. Her mother would be a hypocrite, Sola thinks, if she tried to do harm to her while also judging her for who she is.

She understands her mother very well. If Sola can start a new life as a society lady she can maybe find a man and get her mother out of their neighborhood, maybe another city altogether. A new life, where nobody knows them.

But then, Sola knows, there would just be a new town full of different people who would in time learn all about them. And maybe the past wouldn’t follow them. But Sola knows who she is, and she knows she will be who she is long as she lives, no matter how much money any prospective suitors have, no matter how big their houses are, no matter what they teach her in the finishing school.

_

“You shouldn’t roll your eyes,” Hilda Remington says as everyone makes their way out of Deportment class. Sola had been annoyed by their instructor, Mrs. Hartford, (“Madame” Hartford, as she insists on being called) calling out to everyone to _walk out the door gracefully, don’t run like hoydens._ It’s the last class of the day, what does the old woman expect, Sola had thought. “ _Madame_ will see.” This, said with a tinge of sarcasm.

Sola doesn’t really care whether or not _Madame_ will see, but she supposes Hilda has a point. She does have to give Hilda credit, for trying to keep her from getting in trouble. If she wanted to, she could have said nothing, and drawn attention to herself so that Mrs. Hartford would have seen what Sola was doing. Sola may have made that choice in her place, if she wanted to make enemies. Enemies are made very easily and stealthily here in finishing school- Sola has already been briefed on which teachers dislike each other by her roommate- and likely in “society” too. It’s not like back home where people were more open and forceful.

If she wanted to, if she ever needed to, Sola knows she could physically fight any of these girls and win. Even if she’s smaller, it wouldn’t matter. They’re different from her.

“Thank you,” she says calmly, making her face into a mask of serenity. Deportment isn’t even difficult, it’s just bothersome often, listening to the Hartford woman constantly scolding everyone. Hilda looks unsettled. Her dark blue day-dress makes her look like one of those military secretaries, or maybe that’s what she’s going for. Or what her family wants her to go for, most likely. It’s much better quality than anything Sola owns. Hilda is one of the wealthiest girls at this school. Maybe it’s a bit too early to call, but Sola has a feeling about her- that she doesn’t like her. Hilda always acts like she’s the hostess to the other girls. It irritates Sola, but she doesn’t let on.

“I’m not trying to be rude,” Hilda sighs.

“Of course not,” Sola says understandingly. Hilda, from what Sola has been hearing, doesn’t seem to mind being scandalous, although she hasn’t heard many details yet. The gossip here isn’t like back home, it’s not as blatant, or maybe it would be, if Sola had any close friends to speak plainly with. “I know you’re not a rude person, Hilda.” 

Hilda smiles delicately. “You’re very understanding. Soon enough _Madame_ will be using you as an example.” She furrows her eyebrows and raises her chin in an imitation of Mrs. Hartford, and pitches her voice to sound older and affected. “Young ladies, why can’t you be more like Sola? She is graceful and quiet and feminine, what a lady should be, unlike you brash little harlots who will never find husbands.” Sola can’t tell whether or not Hilda is expressing jealousy, but she laughs all the same, loud enough for another girl nearby to hear and look over. The tiny girl with short dark hair, Massima Lundo. Sola’s roommate, for the past week, and likely for the rest of their academic career at this place. Massima speaks often, but doesn’t ask many questions. Yet she still has a curiosity about her. Sola is very careful what she says to her.

“What has Hilda said this time?” Massima says to Sola, her voice bolder than one would imagine from looking at her. “I hope she hasn’t burned your ears too badly. People are often shocked by her,” Massima says, exchanging a mischievous look at Hilda. Perhaps, Sola thinks, Hilda is not exactly what she seems. She’s still not sure if she likes her much, though.

“I’m not shocked by her,” Sola says mildly. Massima looks at her silently, for a short but odd moment, as if she’s trying to assess what she might mean.

It would take a lot for any of you hothouse flowers to shock me, Sola thinks, but then, maybe some of you are not hothouse flowers after all.

_

That Friday afternoon, Sola studies grammar at her desk in her and Massima’s shared room. It isn’t too difficult, and she may as well get it out of the way, although there isn’t much else to do. Maybe she’ll explore around North City this weekend. If there are any high society parties, she certainly hasn’t been invited.

The door opens with a swing and Massima comes barreling in, in a whirl of mint-green fabric- her scarf, her circle skirt, even her socks. “Sola, what are you doing?” she asks excitedly. “It’s a Friday.”

“I know,” Sola says, irritated at having her concentration be broken. “I’m studying. I’m new here, after all, I may as well catch up.”

“Oh, come on,” Massima says, sitting down on her bed and taking off her shoes. “You’re doing fine here. Besides, there are other things to do here besides study.” Sola thinks she might actually want to bang her head against the wall if Massima suggests something mind-numbing like a sewing circle or whatever it is that rich girls are raised to do. But Massima doesn’t seem like the type who wants her mind to be numbed, so Sola turns around to look at her face to face.

“Like what?” she asks.

Massima laughs, ever so slightly. “You’re so serious,” she says. Yes, Sola supposes, and what of it. “You’ve never been to one of these before but often on weekends we hold _salons_ ,” Massima confides, leaning forward from her place on the bed. “You know, like a gathering where we talk about art and culture and important, interesting things like that.”

I know what a damn salon is, Sola thinks indignantly. But she smiles serenely. “That sounds very nice,” she says, “is it in one of the common rooms, or the tea room?”

Massima shakes her head, a devious look on her face. “Oh, no,” she says, lowering her voice. “They’re more…intimate affairs. This week it will be in Hilda’s room. We go at ten tonight,” she says, as if she’s already made up both their minds, which would annoy Sola more if she hadn’t already decided she was interested enough to want to see what it is. She wonders if any of them know anything about alchemy. Probably not much, but these girls have connections, and who knows _who_ they know. They may know people who are well practiced.

“So we will,” Sola says. “If it’s at ten that gives me time to finish studying,” she says, not looking away from Massima. “I can keep your secret,” she adds, after a long moment. Massima almost looks surprised.

“It’s your secret too now,” Massima tells her, putting on a pair of low-heeled shoes. “Now if anyone comes and asks where I am, I’ve gone down to the hairdresser. I’ll be back soon enough, don’t worry.”

“Why would I worry?” Sola asks, keeping her tone controlled. She isn’t sure why she would worry, unless Massima isn’t actually going to the hairdresser.

Massima blinks. “Well,” she says, “because I’ll be alone in the city. Most of the girls don’t usually do that.”

Sola used to go out on her own. Not to do much of anything with other people, but just to get out of the house. Her mother would always ask suspiciously where she’d been. But she’d never go out and try to follow her. She didn’t want to know.

“Oh. I see. So you’re an unescorted lady,” she says pleasantly. Massima seems to appreciate the joke.

“Yes, and often,” she says, pointing her finger right at Sola. “But really, if you want to come out sometime, I wouldn’t mind showing you around. I wouldn’t want you to get lost by yourself or anything.”

Somehow, Sola isn’t sure that she thinks being lost would be such a problem.

_

Sola has many secrets.

About a month before she came to the finishing school, one of the many condemned and abandoned building complexes in Gray Pond Town – an out-of-the-way former office where no one had worked in over ten years, with caving-in roofs and windows with jagged holes, doorways boarded up and splintering away, the sort of abandoned place nobody enters, not even people with nowhere to go – went up in flames in the middle of the night. It was not a regular fire, even though there were not many witnesses, and none there for the entirety of the event, people were woken up by the explosion. It was as if the building had been exploded purposefully by a construction crew. Never mind that Gray Pond Town was small and stagnant enough that everyone would have known about any construction going on. Many people still assumed that was what it had been, wondering why there was no warning and why it happened in the middle of the night. There weren’t many other explanations.

It had started so suddenly, but the explosion’s aftereffects lasted for quite a while. Even far away, they could be seen and heard.

It may well have been the most beautiful thing to ever happen in Gray Pond Town.

No torches were found, no evidence of gasoline. The local authorities could not label it arson, as there were no reported suspects, and no one came forward.

Old buildings are very delicate.

The transmutation circles of the moon and sun, as close to the ones in the old reference book in the small local library as possible (the images all had that rough look of old printing presses), drawn on the gravel and dirt outside of the old building were burned away. Even though the inside of the building seemed strangely cold, as if the shadows themselves were shivering. 

When Sola came home that night, her mother asked her where she’d been, why she smelled of charred wood, what she’d done this time. But she didn’t give an answer. She just told her mother to go back to bed and get some rest, she shouldn’t stay up all night.

Accursed girl, her mother said, not in Amestrian, but Drachman. Sola noticed her mother did not seem angry so much as wary and apprehensive. Almost afraid. Perhaps she had been for a long time. 

_

Later that night, Massima begins to get ready for the salon, turning on her radio and filling the room with the sound of some romance-play. She’s only now getting ready, whereas Sola has been preparing herself for a while now. Massima seems somewhat loose- she even undresses in the same room as Sola, even though she could just easily walk into the bathroom and do so. That’s very unusual. And rather inconsiderate that she doesn’t even ask if Sola minds. 

Perhaps Sola would be seen by overcompensating by some for taking so much longer, but she doesn’t think that’s what she’s doing. She’s just putting in effort.

Sola notices Massima behind her in the vanity mirror. Her dark waves of hair are loose around her shoulders, and she has on a black lace shawl in the Aerugan style, like they have in magazines, although it looks more authentic. This, she wears over a deep red velvet dress with long sleeves. “Wow, you have steady hands,” Massima says, annoyingly breaking Sola’s concentration as she does her eyeliner.

“Yes,” Sola says calmly. “Did you need help doing your face?” Massima isn’t wearing any makeup except dark red lipstick, the kind that Mrs. Hartford and the other teachers certainly wouldn’t approve of, and that Sola wouldn’t dare to wear, not because of insecurity, but because she knows to not wear things that make her “look dangerous,” or fast and easy. Girls from Gray Pond Town have to do a lot to not be seen as fast and easy by outsiders, let alone _become_ fast and easy. Sola realized that young.

She really can’t blame her mother for sending her away. Gray Pond Town is not the sort of place people get many opportunities to leave.

“Oh, no,” Massima waves her hand. “Also, it’s nearly ten.” That means hurry up, Sola supposes. At least in Gray Pond Town people said what was on their minds instead of cloaking it behind propriety. Is there not a way to be polite and open at the same time?

Sola gives her a tight smile in the mirror. “All right,” she says, beginning to stand up in her white high heels that put her at just a few inches shorter of Massima, barefoot.

“You don’t need those,” Massima says, smiling slyly, looking down.

“Excuse me?” Sola asks, wondering if Massima is trying to judge her, trying to brag of her wealth.

Massima looks down ever so slightly, which bothers Sola immeasurably, despite the fact that Massima has to do this in order to look her in the eye. “We don’t wear shoes for these. We’re just going down the hall, anyway,” she says.

“Oh. I would have never known if you hadn’t told me,” Sola says, thinking, _what on earth is going on here?_ She takes off her shoes and leaves them lined up by the vanity and follows Massima’s lead as they quietly make their way out of their room and towards Hilda’s.

_

Massima knocks on the white-painted door at the end of the hallway. Sola can hear girls talking from the other side, even before she’s right in front of it. The door opens just a crack, and there’s a stage-whisper. “What’s the password?” someone asks- the warm voice of Claire Danton, it would seem. As if this is an illicit nightclub during the censorious days of Fuhrer President Lewis, who came before the current Fuhrer President Bradley.

“Melusina,” Massima grins. The old story of the half-sea serpent, half-woman. Possibly, Sola thinks, they got the idea from the dragon on the Amestrian flag, what with this school instilling patriotic values and feminine ideals. But these girls evidently have their own spin on these concepts. Maybe it isn’t terribly creative, but Sola can admit that there may be more going on in these girls’ heads than simply what their families have been telling them since birth.

The door swings open, and Sola can see the dormitory beneath the celebratory decorations. All the girls are dressed somewhat like Massima- not quite formally, but not casually either, almost decadently. All barefoot, strangely. They form a somewhat coherent circle on the floor, and the radio is softly playing music that would be more fitting for a dancehall than a place for fine young ladies. The lights are dimmed, and there are sheer red cloths over the lamps, giving the light a sensuous red cast that colors the faces of the girls, as well as the clothing if anyone is dressed pale enough.

As the door closes, in the light, Sola’s white gown is a deep red, her skin tinged with the color, too. Her eyes must look like that of an Ishvalan’s- she’s always thought their red eyes were fascinating. 

“Welcome,” Hilda says, her voice almost startlingly loud. Her large pendant shines in the light- a platinum dragon, though a much different dragon from the one on the flag. This is a sharper, sinewy creature. Its eye is a black crystal. “This is your first time here,” Hilda casts her own eyes at Sola. “So you must tell us a secret.”

“Everyone does it their first time,” Massima tells her.

“Is that so,” Sola says, making sure to sound rhetorical, even though she genuinely is wondering.

“Oh, yes,” Hilda says. “But then, much of what goes on here, you’ll find, is the best kind of secret.”

You foolish girls do not know anything at all of what it means to hide something, Sola thinks. “All right,” she says.

When she was ten years old, she and a girl from school she was friends with went down to the pond. The girl’s name was Ingrid. They went alone, because they weren’t supposed to go swimming there. Ingrid wasn’t a good swimmer, but she went out to the deeper area of the pond anyway, and couldn’t keep her head above the water. Sola watched her struggle, to see if Ingrid would be able to help herself, and she did not help her. It took quite a while, but Ingrid could not keep herself above the water. Sola went home to her parents to tell them what happened, because she figured it would be better for them to tell Ingrid’s parents, because this was the sort of matter adults spoke about to themselves, without children as messengers.

“But how did it happen?” Sola’s mother kept asking. She didn’t immediately call upon Ingrid’s family the way Sola had expected. “I don’t understand,” she kept saying, even though it was clear that the more Sola repeated herself, the more her mother understood. She was horrified, Sola saw. Her father stayed silent throughout the conversation and looked at her strangely, as if he’d never truly seen her before.

Maybe he had not.

That night, after her father had gone to Ingrid’s house- her mother had shut herself up in her room- he came to Sola’s room, where she was doing her addition and subtraction homework. It was very easy, and she thought she would prefer to learn about science or even alchemy.

“Sola,” her father asked. “Look at me.” She did. Her father was very honest and direct, which was something she respected about him. Many parents hid things from their children or wouldn’t talk to them. But Sola’s father taught her how to fish. He taught her what death was. And sometimes he even told her sometimes he thought he should have waited to explain it to her, that he wished he’d explained it better to her, so she would have a better understanding. And she always thought, but never said to him, that she did understand, of course she did.

“I need you to tell me something,” he said gently, but gravely. “When Ingrid was drowning, did you just watch?” He looked at her unwaveringly, like he understood perfectly. “I told her parents that you tried to help her. But I don’t think that was very honest of me, even if it was the right thing to do.”

“How can it be both those things?” Sola asked. Her father closed his eyes for a moment.

“Sola, please just tell me,” he said.

“You’re right,” she told him. There was no surprise in his face, it was as if he had known. It was then that she realized her father understood her better than her mother ever would, because her mother did not want to understand her, although Sola did not quite yet realize that though her father understood her all along, it was something he lamented. “I watched her. I wanted to see what would happen, if she would – you know.”

“If she would live,” her father said. “Is that what you mean.” His tone was so even that it was not even really a question, but she did not remark on that.

“Yes, otets, I suppose so,” Sola told him.

The next morning, he was gone. She never saw him again, and as far as she knew neither did her mother, and it seemed that somehow, many people in Gray Pond Town either believed they knew what happened or figured out what happened or something in between the truth and their imagination, because after that, people spoke to her differently, as if they were genuinely afraid of her or threatened by her, and not just that she was unusual.

“I suppose if you really want to know a secret, you’ll find this out anyway,” Sola shrugs, and looks at the girls in Hilda’s red-tinted dormitory. “I am not like the rest of you. My family is from humble origins. You could say poor. My father was from Drachma, and my mother’s family was too, although she herself was born in Amestris. We were not at all a wealthy family. My father worked in the brewery and my mother in the shoe factory. I’m sure some of you have heard of Gray Pond Town.”

“Oh my,” shivers one of the girls, Alicia Woodmire. Sola wants to smile at that as much as she wants to slap her for it.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” Sola says airily. “Not if you can get out, as I did. My mother saw I had potential and so she sent me here.” That isn’t exactly untrue. “I don’t try and pretend I come from somewhere I’m not. I just don’t always speak extensively about my personal life if there’s no reason to.”

“Well,” Massima says after a moment, looking almost guilty, “we won’t tell anyone you’re from there if you don’t want us to.” We? And how will Massima guarantee that? Sola almost laughs.

Sola smiles at her softly. “But Massima,” she says, “I don’t plan on being from Gray Pond Town for much longer.”

In the brief silence, the festive music plays seductively.

“Welcome to our salon, Sola,” Hilda says. She reaches behind her for a tray of what appear to be fragrant candied rose petals. “Everyone, take one,” Hilda says.

“They’re dipped in liquor,” Massima whispers to Sola. So she takes one of the red petals and puts it in her mouth, and feels its soft texture and sharp taste melt on her tongue.

“So, everyone,” she asks, looking at Hilda specifically. “What are your secrets?” Sola quickly learns, some notable, some not so much, including:

Massima’s father, a diplomat who works with Aerugo, had an affair with one of their aristocratic ladies. This is not something that directly concerns Massima, so either Massima has no real secrets, or she’s lying. Sola isn’t sure which one is more likely. Possibly the latter, although what may be a shocking secret to the people of a finishing school may not be very shocking to Sola.

Claire has seizures. They frighten her, and while her family is wealthy enough to get her the best medical care possible, she feels that it is deficiency on her part, and what’s more, she gets the feeling that her family feels this way about her too, and this is why it seems that they prefer her younger sister, Cecile. Unfair, Sola thinks, but unsurprising, and the insecurity is something Claire really should try to get past. 

Alicia Woodmire, a mouselike, shy girl whose father is the current mayor of North City, says she has the vice of smoking cigars. Which isn’t particularly exciting to hear about, but Sola really didn’t think Alicia had a shred of rebellion in her, so learning she does after all is interesting. It wasn’t so long ago, Sola thinks to her chagrin, that she herself was just a shy, quiet girl too afraid to talk to boys or try and make friends with girls, who could barely meet the eye of town gossips. 

Hilda prefers women and has no inclination for men, which really, when Sola thinks about it, isn’t something that feels like a secret. In fact, she probably would have figured it out sooner or later if she hadn’t said anything. This does put everything Sola knows about Hilda in a new light. She wonders if General Remington knows. Hilda doesn’t ever refer to him as Dad or Papa or any sort of term of endearment the way the other girls do (in Sola’s house, her father had always been _otets_ ) just “my father” or “the General,” and always in a flat tone. 

“Have you ever been to Drachma?” Alicia asks her quietly once everyone is done going over their secrets. “You did say your family is from there, and it is so close.”

“No,” Sola says. “Maybe one day.”

“That’s too bad,” Massima says. “Everyone should travel. I wish we learned more about other places in school.” You’re at a finishing school, what do you expect? Sola wants to tell her.

Hilda looks straight at Sola. “Massima has been to Aerugo many times. I’d love to go there. And Ishval, and Creta. Really, anywhere. I love reading about other places and their customs…” Something about Hilda’s tone makes it clear that she doesn’t mean how tables are meant to be set and what honorifics are to be used when speaking with important people. 

“Do you mean alchemy?” Sola asks. “Because I know they don’t teach that here. And you would have to do your own personal research to learn anything.”

Hilda gives a knowing half-smile. “You most definitely would,” she says. “I’m interested in all kinds of things like that…we love to talk about alchemy here, though none of us are alchemists.”

Not none of us, Sola thinks, so long as I’m part of us. But they don’t have to know that now.

“There are women who are alchemists. It isn’t as if none of you could,” Sola says. Of course, there are no female State Alchemists, but then, it was only in the past few years that the military began allowing in women.

“Well,” Alicia adds, “that’s certain. But none of us are really supposed to. In a way, it’s out of the question.” I suppose that must be how it feels to you, Sola thinks. But she does not feel the same way. She does not have that kind of life, that kind of obligation to a family’s image. Maybe if she did, she would not feel like these girls are limiting themselves. Perhaps, she wonders, they really are content to do what is set out before them, however it can be.

Sola doesn’t want to go back to Gray Pond Town, not to live. And she is starting to realize that there isn’t anything set in front of her the way the other girls have. Even if she goes here, she’s still, essentially, in the eyes of the society she is learning to emulate, no one. They may never want her for one of their own; it is a possibility. So she really has no reason to not find something she wants, or at least something that feels right. It would not be natural, she thinks, to live a lie. And certainly, even if any young man took interest in her too, he would see her for who she is, maybe not in her entirety but enough to know that he would also be living a lie. To live an ordinary society life, whether married to a politician, a military man, a socialite, or a businessman, Sola is aware that it would not be for her. And she would not be for them.

“We can still travel, though, and learn of the world around us,” Hilda says with a sort of conviction. “Sola, your family did that.” Hilda’s brown eyes are dead-set on Sola’s face. It wasn’t like that. They weren’t travelers. They left a place that had nothing for them, and came to a place that they learned also had nothing for them, either. She doesn’t say this to Hilda, though. Maybe she would without the other girls in her presence. She thinks she is beginning to respect Hilda, as someone who thinks beyond the world around her.

Sola sometimes wonders where her father is. If he ever found anything worth going anywhere to find. She wonders this because she knows she took more after her father, even if he could not stand to see what she was, and because she sometimes wonders if she’ll ever find anything worth the journey, either.

“I suppose,” she says calmly. “Drachma is a very…fascinating place. It is so vast, and varied.”

Madame Antonia had once approached Sola at the cinema, when she was taking tickets for the night, because she took jobs that gave money and didn’t take anything from her, because she and her mother needed money. “Sola, right? I see you walking down the street to the library on weekends? Many a man would pay for the virginity of a girl of Drachman heritage,” the Madame said. As if there weren’t very many girls of Drachman heritage in the North City Area- the Madame was rather greedy. Sola was fifteen, and had seen younger girls on the balcony of Madame Antonia’s sporting house. It was not the first time the Madame had approached her with the same proposition, and the Madame had to know that there weren’t many places that would hire out Sola, given that there were rumors that bad things happened around her. Some men had propositioned her too on occasion, but not always with the promise of money, which made their inquiry rather worthless in her estimation. It was, though, the first time that she asked it where other people could hear her. “It would be much more lucrative than being a ticket girl.”

Sola wanted to haul off and slam the cash register over that heifer of a Madame’s head, but instead said, “sorry, Madame, my mother would be very displeased. We wouldn’t want to hold up the line, either.” The Madame gave a forced smile, paid for her ticket, and walked ahead.

“In Aerugo,” Massima says authoritatively, “there are many communities of people from Creta. The Cretans, they have some similar things as they do in Drachma. Like the amulet of the evil eye.” Yes, Sola supposes this is true, but the evil eye is hardly unique in the world, it’s just not something Amestrian culture has. But then, many Amestrians are only familiar with their own culture. “Say,” Massima says, “you have such unique eyes, Sola. They’re like the evil eye, so bright and blue. I mean that as a compliment,” she says, reassuringly. It doesn’t insult her. The evil eye is almost startling, for something meant to ward off the thing it was named for.

“Yes,” Alicia says, “come to think of it, you do.”

Hilda looks again at Sola as if she’s trying to figure something out. “I read that they have the evil eye in Ishval, too,” she says.

“The symbol, you mean? Because the evil eye itself, if one believes in it, would exist everywhere,” Sola says, thinking about the blue glass circle her mother kept on the wall in their house. How she began wearing a necklace with the symbol on it after Ingrid drowned.

Hilda’s eyes widen, the whites gleaming red. “What a concept,” she says, savoring the idea. “We do all live in the same world. I feel like many people overlook that when they speak of things they consider far apart from them…”

“I wonder,” Sola says idly, “if there are any alchemical symbols that utilize the evil eye, since it is so widespread, almost as much as alchemy itself.” Not that she’s seen, but then, the library in Gray Pond Town didn’t have much, and then, she had to somewhat improvise. It worked, though, for the most part, whenever she tried it. There were many abandoned places and empty lots of forgotten land that no one would notice an extra few layers of destruction in, and if they did, it would hardly matter.

“Are you interested in alchemy?” Claire asks, almost shyly.

Sola smiles widely. “Well,” she says, “I’m interested in a lot of things. Are you all, here?”

The girls all exchange a knowing glance. Hilda gets up and goes to her bookshelf, and pulls an old, slim volume out. “I have here the Amestrian translation of The Lay of Dante,” she says, referring to the historic epic poem about the legend of Dante, the legendary woman alchemist who was the most powerful in the world, for a time. Which isn’t really about alchemy, not to Sola’s knowledge, but she doesn’t say anything. These girls are just into things they can’t get from their regular lives, and Sola supposes she can understand that. “And an old volume of alchemical signs, but it’s not comprehensive.”

“How interesting,” Sola says.

“I’d like to read a passage from the poem,” Alicia says quietly, a small smile playing over her face. Hilda hands her the book, and she opens it, and her soft voice is eerie against the fast-paced music of the radio in the backgrounds as she begins reciting. “ _The Lady Dante of The Forest, whose red light shines as deep as darkness, shed her skin as a serpent, this sorceress with the strength of a dragon and the body of a corpse…”_ The red light on Alicia’s pale face, the thick musky smell of candles against the windows. The cool of the wooden floor on Sola’s feet. The serene expression of Hilda, almost vacant, as if she is imagining herself somewhere far away.

_

Sola dreams she is awake, lying in her dorm bed, but the air is cold, as if she is outside in late November. Her skin prickles, and the misty cold is almost refreshing. The shadows in the room, mingled among the moon rays, seem to move in place, a dark kind of shimmering.

Sola, the shadows say.

Yes, she says.

The shadow seems to shift, as if a smile, although of course it has no face. She reaches out her hand, as if to touch it, but it moves back.

Go back to sleep, it tells her, gently, the way her father used to tell her when she woke up very early.

When she wakes up, the room is stuffy as ever, the sunlight shining through the windows like an expensive car’s too-bright headlights. The alarm clock blares like an unpracticed orchestra.

“Wake up, Massima,” Sola says, her roommate awake, pressing her hands over her face and groaning ever so slightly. “We have our lessons soon. We wouldn’t want to be late.”

_

The next night Sola dreams of the shadows again, which tells her it isn’t at all a dream. Because her eyes are open, and they’re still there, and it still feels like she’s outside on a late autumn night. And the darkness moves, if she looks at it, like a pond that seems still, but ripples. She lies with her eyes open, waiting for it to speak.

“Sola the destroyer,” it says, a lightness in its voice, almost curious. “You used the symbols of the sun and moon to cause alchemical explosions in the abandoned office, in the old field, in the lot behind the demolished factory.”

“Yes,” she says, entranced by its movements, its sensation of such an odd and unexplainable atmosphere. “Yes, that is me.”

“You want to do more,” it says. Not a question.

“Yes,” she says. It comes out almost as a sigh, such a release it is to be able to say so out loud to someone, something that understands. A shadow casts itself over her bed and she feels the cold touch her face.

“Then you will,” it says, “I think you will.”

Sola doesn’t remember anything else. Only waking up to the sound of the alarm clock, in the stale air of the dormitory room and its ancient window that is stuck in place and the unused fireplace with its decades-old ashes on the ground like the crumbled remnants of dead leaves when the snow melts, and Massima’s ritual complaining.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Massima says, “it took me forever to get back to sleep.”

“Were you sick?” Sola asks, hoping there isn’t anything going around.

“No,” Massima says. “I could have sworn I heard you talking to someone. You didn’t have anyone in here, did you?” She smiles mischievously. “Because if you did, I’d love to know his name…”

Sola shakes her head. As if that would be any of Massima’s business. “No. There was no one here.”

“Hm,” Massima says, looking at her for a bit too long. “That’s odd. I must have been dreaming.”

“I’m sure that was it,” Sola says, averting her eyes as Massima shrugs and starts undressing, as always, without even closing the curtains or going into another room.

_

It’s Thursday and there’s no school tomorrow because the teachers have a meeting, so Massima asks Sola if she wants to go out on the town. Sola agrees, because there’s no point in saying no, and because she likes to see the city anyway. And if the shadows know where she’s been in the past, maybe they are following her. And so she can draw them out and talk to them. Find out what exactly they are. It would be difficult to carry on much of a conversation with it with Massima sleeping a few feet away from her, liable to wake up at any moment.

She gets the sense Massima doesn’t really believe she was dreaming. Which has the possibility to be very troublesome, but then, what can Massima really do about it if she doesn’t know or remember the whole exchange? Maybe the shadow is only audible to people it is directly addressing, but then, maybe not. Massima could have seen and heard it. Or she could believe it was something entirely different and possibly use it as blackmail. Even if that doesn’t seem like her. What seems more like her is asking questions and pressing until she’s satisfied with the answer she gets.

That could be much more troublesome than if she had truly seen and remembered something that no one would believe.

But Massima does not seem to be acting suspicious, so Sola does not let these thoughts bother her too much, for now. She walks into the half-empty classroom, ready to learn about the first ladies of Amestris, and Hilda, in the front row, turns around and looks at her observingly, for the slightest moment. Then, but only after that, Hilda smiles and says hello. 

Miss Cavendish lectures for an hour while all the girls take notes, and then the bell rings.

As they file out, Hilda approaches Sola and leans against the wall of the hallway, rifling through her bookbag. “Are you coming tonight with us to the party?” she asks.

“Massima already told me about it, yes,” Sola says. “Where will it be at, again? I didn’t recognize the name of the place.”

Hilda smiles with her mouth closed, yet so widely it’s amazing her teeth don’t show. “The Midnight Lounge,” she whispers. “It’s a notorious place. We’d all be in such trouble if any of the administration found out, but they never do. This place doesn’t ask who you are, or care if you’re unescorted. It’s a place of _wildness_ ,” Hilda says. Wildness by whose standards, Sola wants to ask, but she is still interested.

“So, you’ve been before,” Sola says.

“They know us there,” Hilda says under her breath. “Well, not exactly who we are. But we’re frequent enough patrons. And I think you’ll like it enough to be as well.” 

“I do hope so,” Sola says, wondering what she’s getting herself into.

“And Sola,” Hilda adds. “You don’t need to be so proper. Surely you can wear something that isn’t so….formal.” So shall I go barefoot and dress as a harlot, the way you and your friends like to on Friday nights in your room, Sola wonders. She wonders what Hilda and the other girls did before she came. She wonders if Hilda has been with any of the girls here, if she has her eye on Sola for any of that. The idea is strange, to say the very least.

“You mean I may show some skin?” Sola asks. While she doesn’t yet have the money for the expensive kind of wardrobe the other girls do, she always makes sure to dress well, in a way that would be considered fine and respectable and attractive.

Hilda gives a half-smile, her eyes narrowing daringly. “To say the least,” she says, and Sola wonders what goes on in North City that she never knew about, that she never would have considered, even with all her willing her mind far away from Gray Pond Town until she left it.

_

Sola prepares herself in front of her vanity, half-paying attention to Massima’s suggestions as to what she should wear, because after all, she doesn’t want to be really out of place.

Pale white makeup on her eyes, same color on her lips. Like her face is sculpted of ice. Sola knows she has a strange appearance. Perhaps she will be able to fit in better tonight than the others. Behind her, in the mirror, she can see the reflection of Massima in a short black dress with fabric that hints at, but does not quite reach, transparency. For her part, Sola has on a white shirt that exposes her shoulders and has a deep, low neckline, with a red skirt that has a long slit up the side. Clothes for special occasions that never came, until now, really.

“You look so different,” Massima says as though it’s a compliment, which Sola does not really find amusing.

“Do I?” Sola asks, wondering if it’s true. Her hair is down and combed straight instead of pinned up or braided or tied back. She stands up and sees herself and realizes she does look somewhat different. Less inhibited. For a brief moment she imagines herself with the sun and the moon symbols, one on each palm. She wonders what the shadows will say to her later.

“When you’re ready,” Massima tells her.

Sola looks at herself in the mirror one more time, the beginnings of a self she recognizes, but knows few other people would, coming to the reflection. Who she would be seen as, or at least, the rough idea of that. “Oh, yes,” she says to Massima, “I wouldn’t want to keep everyone waiting.”

_

A lot of the girls didn’t come. Claire is staying back in her dormitory, but of course, when Massima guides Sola down the hallway Hilda is the first person she sees. Hilda, who does what she wants whenever she can take control of her life, even if only for a few hours. Sola can respect that. It feels like conscious choices towards autonomy and real desire exist in Hilda.

“You’re ready?” Hilda says, flanked by Alicia and Florence, a girl who doesn’t say much and who Sola doesn’t quite know what to make of. Her “secret” was to say she didn’t get along with her father, an important man in the military. Which made Sola realize how the image of familial perfection was so important in society, yet so far from her own life. So far from what was ever expected of her. She wonders what else Florence is hiding behind her serene face and soft gray eyes. When they all had to go to some tea function with some of the young men from the military academy, many of the young men came to Florence, though she hardly said anything. Many men came to Sola, as well, and looked at her admiringly. A few of them seemed unsettled by her, which was interesting, given that she wasn’t saying anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps they were inexperienced with women, perhaps they found her intense. Who knows.

Hilda wears a long, mannish coat, but it’s open and showcases how short her dress is. Alicia is rifling around in her purse and Florence is standing watch, as if expecting one of the teachers to come crusading down the hall- although they never do. They never pay any mind to their students once classes are over. This finishing school has seen much better days, and the teachers do what they’re paid to. Which is good, Sola thinks, she wouldn’t want anyone to look too close. Not when she has important conversations at night.

Sola steps forward before Massima can, and quickly walks to Hilda’s side. “Let’s go,” she says, looking over her shoulder to Massima, who hurries up.

_

It only took a few blocks’ worth of a walk to get to the Midnight Lounge, which is down a few streets from the school, across a bridge, and then halfway through the block on the other side. You would hardly notice it if you didn’t know what you were looking for, the lantern at the end of an alleyway, seen very clearly if only you just look.

A guard stands outside the door, and Hilda hands over some money, presumably enough for all of them to enter. So that’s all it takes in some places. You can just be anyone. But then, of course, no one knows Sola from Gray Pond Town here. No one may ever know her from there again, and then she really will be able to be anyone.

_

The dim lights in the club are a dark green, like an emerald in a black velvet case, and the furniture seems to be all battered, old leather. A stage in the back has a band playing a sensuous song, with a woman in a see-through sequined dress singing and swaying.

At the bar, Alicia is sharing a cigarette with two young men; they are passing it around between themselves and laughing and talking and doing shots, the small glasses multiplying, the men’s hands on her shoulders and legs, her hands on their faces, their lips touching each other’s- Alicia sharing the two men and the two men sharing her and also, surprisingly, each other.

Massima, on the dance floor, shakes and swings around with a young man, as if they are one body that can move in all directions at once. They are so close to one another and move so wildly it is like they are trying to emulate intercourse through dance. Sola wonders if Massima knows this man.

Hilda, however, is off in a corner, at a small table with another young woman, a tall one with platinum blonde hair and a green dress that is so similar to the color of the club’s lighting, she looks almost like a floating head for a moment, both amusing and eerie. Over the sounds of the loud music, Hilda and the woman whisper in each other’s ears. They are sharing a chair, Sola notices. She notices they are kissing, that Hilda’s hand is underneath the thin strap of the other woman’s dress. How interesting, Sola thinks.

In the distance, there appear to be rooms with closed doors, and booths with canopies- not the veil-thin canopies of princess’ beds in storybooks, but deeply opaque cloths like tents that cannot be seen through, but Sola can hear, just barely, above the music, what is going on.

So for the time being, Sola is enjoying the music and atmosphere alone. A few men offered to buy her drinks, but she politely declined. She doesn’t know enough about the place to know if there’s anything to her liking, and besides, she doesn’t want to lose control. Sobriety is a good choice for tonight, at least. Some men might like drunk women, but not in a way Sola wants to be liked.

“Miss,” a young man’s voice makes its way to her, over her shoulder. He isn’t quite whispering in her ear, but he’s close, a dark-haired, tall man right next to her, so close she can smell the leather of his jacket. “I saw you refuse some of the other men’s offers for a drink. If you don’t want to drink, would you like to dance?” he smiles at her. He is polite, she thinks, and not over-familiar, but his overtures are there, and they are not unwelcome. “I’m Andreas. I haven’t seen you here before.”

“That’s because I’ve never been here before. My name is Sola.” She says to him, taking his hand as they walk towards the floor. She’s learned enough dancing from the finishing school for a lifetime of balls and dances, but this isn’t exactly the kind of place to put those skills to use. 

“I’m not surprised. I would have remembered you,” he tells her. The drums are fast and hard as gunshots, and Massima, within a yard’s length of Sola but so far away, practically reverberates, off in her own world she shares with her companion.

Sola half-smiles at that, wondering if it’s true, or if he’s just trying to flatter her. “Would you,” she says. “It’s nice of you to say that I seem memorable. For your part…” she makes sure he can see her looking him up and down approvingly, her eyelids lowering as she leans in closer to him and he leads her in a circle with her hands gripping his body, hard the way a professional dancer grips the barre, rather than how someone would hold onto their dance partner. She wonders if he notices, if he likes it that hard. “I’ll remember you, too.”

They dance, in silence, and Sola closes her eyes, and hears the band playing, so loud and earth-shaking, she knows the pedestrians must hear it from the streets opposite the alley. It must sound so imposing and powerful to them. Right next to it, it sounds almost explosive. Like crashing and roaring, the kind of sound that drowns every other sound that tries to make itself heard around it.

“You’ll remember me?” Andreas says, smiling, his hand on Sola’s shoulder. He isn’t gripping her, just lightly touching her, like he’s feeling soft fabric. Like he’s testing out his limits. “Are you leaving so soon?” The song is winding down to its end, the singer dancing in place in silence while the musicians play the final notes.

She leans her head back and smiles wide enough to show her teeth, and shakes her head slowly, her hair shifting over and behind her exposed shoulders. “No, no,” she says, quietly. But he hears her, she knows he does. She looks out of the corners of her eyes- Massima is nowhere to be seen, and neither are Alicia and Hilda. Sola revels in the thought.

“Would you like to talk for a while before we dance again?” Sola asks. A new song is playing, the band’s attempt at a sexy rendition of some popular, saccharine torch song that Massima always has playing on the radio. “I don’t like this song. I’d rather dance to something I like, later. I’m sure you can show me a quieter place in this club?” she asks assuredly, thankful that her high heels make her at least tall enough that he doesn’t have to practically inspect the ground to look at her, even if she isn’t at eye level with him. It may be a bit petty, but she doesn’t like that she’s hardly ever at eye level with anyone; it feels like everyone always looks down on her.

Soon, she thinks, they at least will not be standing. 

Andreas raises his eyebrows in understanding, and takes Sola’s hand, guiding her away from the dance floor. Not a few men look away from their own lady friends, and to her and Andreas, as if to examine her, and to envy him, for her company. That is what it seems. She looks out of the corner of her eye at one of the men, over her shoulder, walking a wider step so her leg shows almost all the way through the slit in her skirt. He stares at her as if frozen. Either she is powerful, or he is weak. Maybe both. She is not yet sure, but she would like to know soon, to better understand.

Andreas opens a door, a deep, vibrant green light flickering inside the small room, decorated with what seems like velour drapes over cushions. Sola takes his hand and leads him in, before he can lead her in. When he has followed her in, she closes the door firmly.

_

He began with kissing her hungrily while telling her she was beautiful, asking her where she’d been, and she’d said, oh here and there, but he’d said, no, really. So she’d told him that she came from another part of the city but recently moved to this area, and he’d said he’d grown up in North City and delivers mail, going all around the neighborhood, but his packages and letters and parcels come from Central and East City and Drachma. All over, she’d said, do you ever want to go to those places? And he’d said, sometimes, but I love North City, I really do. And she hadn’t known what to say to that. Because she doesn’t love North City. She doesn’t really love Amestris at all, despite the fact that at finishing school so many of the lessons delve into patriotic instructions, because after all, they’re all supposed to marry men who are important in Amestrian society, military, or government. She doesn’t love Drachma, even if she thinks her parents may have. She doesn’t think she loves anywhere, but if she’s ever hated anywhere, it may well be Gray Pond Town. And as long as Gray Pond Town is so much as a speck on the most detailed map of North City, she’ll never be able to have love for it. It will always be something she will be measured against. 

“Are you all right?” he asks her, in her silence. The green light, dark as ferns in the night, casts a glow over her face, like she’s deep under the sea.

“Oh, yes,” she says, pulling him in closer, “yes, Andreas, I’m certainly all right.” She closes her eyes, and feels the thrum of the music making the floor vibrate. “I feel wonderful, do you?”

“Yes,” he says, his voice almost a whisper, and he pulls her close, on top of his legs, trying to find a zipper on her clothes. She guides his hand away and unbuttons her skirt and takes off her shirt herself.

“Touch me,” she tells him, “with your hands, with anything.” He does. And she unzips his leather jacket and slowly unbuttons his shirt, buttons she can barely see in the dark. And she unzips his trousers and he rises and slips out of them and moves downward to lie on top of her, hard and rushing like an ocean’s wave. Her back rubs against the soft black fabric draped around the room, and her eyes close, involuntarily for just a moment as she feels something inside her, sharp and warm and incisive, and she can feel wet, hot blood coming from her, and she imagines it slow and red like a flower blooming. Like a culmination, rather than a loss, as it is said to be when it happens for the first time. 

It isn’t a loss and he isn’t claiming her or ruining her, not at all. She feels transmuted- the same elements, but renewed, in a way. He was merely the means she used to do so. It could have been different, under other circumstances, if it happened only after she’d been married off as is the goal her teachers have in mind for her, if she’d stayed in Gray Pond Town and been taken by Madame Antonia, or if she’d given in to any of the young men in town who weren’t too afraid to look her way. But the future is not yet certain and the past is no longer her present. In this moment she belongs only to the darkness and its shadows and what they promise her, and that thought makes her throw back her head and roll back her eyes as he goes deeper into her.

She gasps deep, from the bottom of her stomach, and drags her fingernails down his back, and he cries out as she feels flesh tear beneath her fingertips, he cries out an exhalation of shock and satisfaction. She puts her fingertips in her mouth and licks the blood from her nails, his garnet-red blood that gleams dark in the light like a precious jewel, that goes down her throat as slick and savory as drops of rosewater.

She can feel him kissing her neck. “Oh, Sola,” he’s saying, “where have you been, where did you come from,” as she holds him so tight against her, she thinks if she were stronger, he’d be hurt.

She smiles. He could never understand if she answered.

“Did you know,” she whispers to Andreas, “Sola means alone in the language of the Aerugans?” he gasps out a no. Even though Sola isn’t even an Aerugan name, it’s true. The Aerugans also burned countless alchemists as witches and sorcerers at the stake up until less than two hundred years ago, according to what Sola has learned at Hilda’s salons. She had never known that before.

“But I’m not alone,” she tells him, her hands grasping each side of his head. “No one’s ever really alone, are they?” he goes limp, collapsing on top of her as his release comes into her, his thick warmth mingling with her blood that she can still feel, the two of them, clashing together on her, in her. On him, too, she thinks, and knows what to do next.

“Lie down,” she tells him, “on your back, turn over.” She slides out from beneath him and as he turns on his back, just as soon as he does, she kneels between his knees and places her head down, tasting him, tasting the stains of her blood on him and swallowing its salty bitterness, taking it back into her, along with what she aroused in him. All of that, because of me, she thinks. He runs his fingers through her hair, as if admiring its texture rather than pulling her head closer. Andreas shudders, his legs bracing, and she smiles, and wonders if he notices that movement of her mouth.

He releases again, this time into her mouth and it’s much more than she expected, and some of it spills down her face and neck but much of it goes down her throat, strangely sweet and thick, like something mixed together in a bowl at a bakery to glaze pastries with. She licks her lips and he sees her, in the dim green light, and he sees her raise her hands to her mouth and lick her fingers. She eats his essence. Andreas gets up, pressing his face to her bare chest, placing his lips, his tongue, against her skin. His hand between her legs. She leans her head back, and his other hand goes against her back, supporting her. 

“I’ve got you, Sola,” he whispers, as if cherishing her, his head in the center of her chest, as if listening to her hammering heartbeat. She can feel it thumping through her body, the way the music in the club thrums through the floor. Sola leans backwards, her back towards one of the cushions, and lets her legs splay apart.

“Come to me, Andreas,” she tells him, “come closer,” and he moves backward, bowing his head to her. “No,” she says. “Andreas, when you do it, please look at me. Look me in the eye.”

His dark eyes glint in the spare green light as his gaze tilts upwards towards her face. She smiles at him, and her eyelids lower, but do not close entirely, as she feels his mouth on her.

“You’ll remember me,” she whispers, to herself, as much as it is to him, and she wonders if he hears, if he’s even paying attention, “you will remember me, Andreas.”

_

Sola is very quiet on the walk home. Massima and Alicia are talking excitedly about the young men they’d met, and Alicia is spraying herself with perfume, presumably to cover the scent of cigarette smoke, given she’d smoked throughout the night. Hilda is talking about the music with Florence, who mysteriously smiles and nods, quietly, barely saying anything in return but clearly communicating her agreement. Sola hadn’t seen her all night, and wonders if Florence was behind any of those doors or canopies. She must have been.

“You seem pleased, Sola,” Hilda says, not rudely, but rather inquisitively. Wouldn’t you like to know all about it, she thinks.

“It was a very good night,” she says delicately. “Thank you so much for bringing us. It was very exciting. Much better than those dull dances we have to go to.”

Alicia laughs, saying “when you’re right, you’re right!”

“Oh, some of the balls aren’t all bad. Sometimes the military throws some good ones,” Florence says, her voice always huskier than Sola expects of her.

“ _Some_ times,” Hilda says pointedly, raising her eyebrows, and the other girls laugh. “I mean, it is the military after all.” Which gets a somewhat less enthusiastic chorus of laughter from the girls, but it inspires Sola’s interest. Hilda is never that dedicated or loud when the girls must sing the national anthem, and she never acts particularly proud or inspired during Amestrian history lessons. There’s also the fact that she acts uninterested whenever there’s a function involving the young military recruits (which some of the men seem to take as her playing aloof), but Sola supposes that Hilda certainly wouldn’t find them interesting regardless of their ties to the military.

Sola wonders which came first. Hilda’s disillusionment with her family, or with the military, or if they were both so tied up together in her mind that it was a simultaneous process. She supposes there may be a time when she finds out, if she gets to know Hilda well enough, but of course, without letting Hilda know her too well. It’s a difficult balance, to know someone without giving yourselves up to them in return, but it can be done. There are a lot of things Sola supposes can be done, that she cannot wait to find out if she is capable of. That she cannot wait to do, if she can.

_

She tells the other girls she just wants to be out in the fresh night (or, very early morning to be more accurate) air for a while before coming in, and they can go back to their dorms without her.

“Are you sure you’re not going somewhere else? You can tell us,” Massima says, sounding almost as if she feels left out.

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that,” Sola assures her, and waits for them all to go inside. Hilda, at the back door of the dormitory, looks back over her shoulder, as if to check if Sola is still there. When they’ve all gone in and shut the door and it’s been long enough that she’s secure in assuming they’ve begun to go up the stairs to their rooms, Sola walks further behind the building. To the rows of trees that are the remainder of what was once a great forest, the rows of evergreens behind the school, their green tips shining and dark in the mist and moonlight. Even in the dark, she casts a shadow, as do the trees, and the school building. Everywhere beneath the moonlight, there lay shadows.

She walks beneath the thick needled branches, smelling the clear, sharp wood and pine as her feet walk over small twigs, cracking them. “Hello,” she says, “hello. I’m here.”

Sola almost doesn’t expect anything. It may be presumptuous, or not her place, to initiate the conversation, or maybe it’s confined to the building, but part of her knows it began speaking with her because it wanted her. Because it knew she wouldn’t write it off as a dream or try to run from it in fear. She wouldn’t be able to look away from it. If she did, she’d spend the rest of her life wondering.

A cool breeze blows by, rustling the pine needles, a sound as soft as rain. The air is so cold it feels sharp against her skin. It’s here, she knows, she can feel it before she even sees the moving shadows, their twists and coils. A strand of her hair lifts in a small rush of air, a small and certainly not natural part of the breeze. The shadow’s doing, a sort of greeting. Then comes the voice.

“I was wondering when you would try and seek me out,” it says. “I’m pleased it was so soon, and with such acceptance.”

“Well, there is a lot I would like to know,” she says. “But thank you, all the same.” The wind sounds like breathing, and she wonders if the shadows breathe. “What would you have me do?”

“Sola, you will learn more in time, but I know you are patient.” It almost sounds like a warning, but she knows to heed it, and she will not accost it.

“May I ask about your nature? What, who you are? Or at least why you have come to me?” Who is this being, she wonders, and who am I, if it is seeking me out? As she asks the cold surrounds her, and envelopes her as though she is walking through fog. Sola involuntarily shivers in the freezing shadows that she can see are moving on her, wrapping around her, like the ivy vines that cover the outside walls of the school nearby.

“You really have never doubted that I am real,” it says. She can feel the edge of one of the cold shadows against her forearm, pinching very intensely, almost enough that it feels like it could cut her skin open, and draw a small bead of blood. Then, that would be definite proof of its reality. Does it ever wonder if it is real? Does it ever wish everyone knew about it, and this is why it is seeking her out, so as not to be ignored by the whole world?

“No,” Sola answers. “I’ve had dreams. I knew you weren’t a dream, which made me wonder what you were.”

There’s a rustling among the shadows, almost like a laugh. “That would be a very long story, Sola. I cannot tell you the whole of it yet.” Yet, she thinks to herself, and smiles. “The more present questions revolve around you. And how you can be of use to me and…the others.”

“The others,” Sola breathes, reflexively. “Are they with us now?”

“Oh, no,” the shadows say. “You would see them. But possibly, you may be able to meet some of them soon. That all depends on you.” Of course it does, she realizes. Contacting her in the first place was a test to see if she would even acknowledge the event as something that happened. “You have power,” the shadows continue. “You are still young, and need practice, but you have the drive. The potential. It glows inside of you, ready like a hot iron. You feel it in you every day. You need it, don’t you. That is why you destroyed the abandoned building in Gray Pond Town. The field, the other occasions.” She wonders how long it’s been following her for.

“Yes,” Sola breathes, “oh, yes.” It is amazing, to be understood so well. It’s never happened before, not really. Not even with her father.

“I know you can hone your skills. It may take a while, but there is yet time.” Strangely, the shadows’ soft voice is almost kind. Or maybe Sola has just wanted to hear this for a long time.

“You are saying you will help me?” Sola asks for clarification, not wanting to destroy this chance at being able to live really as herself, to know who she is.

The shadows extend to her, and they are edged almost like small hands. They wrap around her forearms, cool and soft as water. The tendrils feel her flesh, twisting around her palms and fingers. “Your hands,” the shadows say to her. “I know you want to use them. And you will.”

“Yes,” she whispers, nodding her head. She’s not sure if she’s ever actively wanted anything else.

“We will help one another. You can help yourself by practicing. You will be staking your life on your work,” the shadows tell her. But then, she already has been. Her work has been dangerous. She’s been thrown backwards by the force of her explosions, bruised and scraped, and this is when she’s managed to get as far away as she could. She could have stood closer if she was more skilled. She’s longed to be as close as possible.

For the first time in years, she thinks about walking home from school with Ingrid. They would pass by the train tracks, and sometimes when a train would go by, Sola would stand as close to it as possible, feeling the rush of the train past her, almost pulling her in closer, exhilarating her beyond understanding.

“Why do you do that?” Ingrid had asked her, raising her voice above the sound of the train’s engine as it went ahead, far away to places Sola didn’t know the names of, only that when she stood by the train and felt it rush ahead, she felt like for a moment she could get swept along to there, wherever there was. 

“When I do it I feel free,” Sola had answered quietly, as if to herself more than to Ingrid.

“I can stake everything on my work. I can stake my life, my soul,” Sola says to the shadows, “if you will let me.” A shadow’s frigid darkness surrounds her hand, as if to seal a deal. The gesture is unexpected and it gives her a strange kind of hope. “Thank you for your trust.” Because that is what she is being given. The unspoken expectation is that she will stay silent. Of course she would. If she speaks, either no one would believe her, or perhaps, there would be people out there who would know what she was talking about. The latter may be a rare chance, but she doesn’t know that for sure. And of course, if she disobeyed, she does not doubt that she would be put to death. That message was clear- staking her life upon the work.

“I think you will come into your own very soon, Sola,” the shadows tell her. “You just have to begin working on your craft.” There is more than a hint of expectation in its voice, expectation that she will begin soon.

High above the shadows, the moon glistens silver, and soon, within hours, the sun will be in its place.

Sola nods silently. “I will,” she says. She will look into herself, and do the only thing she really feels like she was made to do. She wonders if the shadows already know that about her, or if this is part of the test, that she needs to prove she will act on her desires and nature. But she has before. She can again.

“Of course you will,” the shadows say, almost endeared, but rather calculating at the same time. But that seems right, for whatever they are. “You should get some sleep now, I suppose. Good night, Sola. Remember our conversation.”

“I certainly will,” she says with as much sincerity as she can find within herself. It is cold around her, and then it is merely the cold air of the autumn, nothing moving in it except the branches in the wind.

Sola turns around and makes her way out of what remains of what was once a forest, and begins to make her way back to her dormitory. She wants to look back, but she knows somewhere in the forest the shadows are still watching, and she feels it would somehow disappoint them if she did. She hopes her guesses are correct, but either way, this is more than she’d ever hoped for.

In her bed next to Massima, she does not dream of shadows. She dreams of light, bright as the sun and moon together, red as blood. It surrounds her, it swallows her, she gives in to it, gives herself up to it. She wants to feel it and for a moment she thinks she does. It is beautiful, and when she wakes up, she is disappointed that it is over.

_

In the morning, once she’s dressed- as much effort as any other day, even though there are no classes- Sola makes her way down to the common room of the dormitory to make herself some green tea. She leaves the room quietly, as Massima is sleeping, and she doesn’t really have any desire to disturb or anger her. As she approaches the room, she can smell the thick scent of hot chamomile, and when she enters she sees Hilda is there alone, reading a book that appears to be in the Ishvalan language. Sola hadn’t known Hilda had that level of expertise.

“Good morning, Hilda,” Sola says. “That looks very interesting, though I can’t say I understand the title. What is it about? I hope you don’t mind if I take my tea with you.”

“No, of course,” Hilda says, furrowing her eyebrows as if she wonders why Sola would even ask permission. She takes a sip of her steaming tea and then extends her arm out, so Sola can see the book better. “It’s a book of poetry by the famous Ishvalan writer Ismail Starr. He lived hundreds of years ago but most of his writings have been preserved. I think the rest of the world could benefit from reading them, but there’s really nothing like the original. A translation would get rid of a lot of what makes the poetry so significant…oh, there I go talking and talking,” Hilda shakes her head, half-smiling.

“No, don’t worry,” Sola says. “It’s good to see you’ve been at this school a while and you still have your own mind and interests and desires. I’m sure this poetry is very special indeed. I’d never heard of Ismail in my life.”

“Oh,” Hilda says, “being here really isn’t that bad. You’ll get used to it. Besides, I’m rather skilled in doing my own thing under everyone’s nose.”

Sola raises her eyebrows. “Well, not mine. I saw you at the table with that tall girl last night.”

Hilda gives sly smile. “Well, that was different. I wasn’t hiding, at least within the club. I noticed you disappeared after a while, though. Do you like tall girls too, Sola?”

Sola’s mouth drops open and she can feel her face warming up. “I- why would you ask- no offense to you, Hilda, but that is not what I meant at all,” she says, trying not to let Hilda shake her. She really does enjoy being scandalous, Sola thinks.

Hilda laughs just slightly. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she says. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to rile you.”

“You haven’t,” Sola says tersely. They are both quiet for a moment, and the smell of chamomile is almost medicinal in how strong it is.

“Hilda,” she asks quietly, because she thinks Hilda is really the only one here who she can ask about something like this, and who would give her a real answer. “What do you really plan on doing after this? After the finishing school, I mean. Maybe the other girls will become socialites and military wives and all that. It’s what we’re being trained for. But I don’t think it’s what all of us were meant for. And I know you have things you want.”

Hilda takes a deep breath, puts down her tea, and looks Sola in the eye. The deep brown eyes on Hilda’s face are very somber, she realizes. Maybe they always are, and Hilda is just good at diverting attention from this fact, along with everything else about her, when she needs to. That may very well be it. A girl like Hilda must have to work hard to get through the days as a general’s daughter. Perhaps Sola has been unfairly judgmental of her in the past. Hilda is no hothouse flower, she realizes. Her world has no more for her than Gray Pond Town had for Sola. It isn’t the first time she’s realized this, but it’s one of the more profoundly clear examples she can think of, where she’s been shown that wealth can be so hollow and meaningless.

“I want to leave this place. Not just the school, North City. I don’t even know if I plan on staying in Amestris.” Sola must look surprised, because Hilda reacts accordingly. “That’s why I study languages. I’ve been doing it for years. It may seem like an extreme thing to do, to leave, but I’ve thought about it. And my family wouldn’t really miss me.” She says this like she’s resigned herself to it. “If I stay, anyway, it will likely cause more problems because I would be more likely to be the cause of gossip if people they know can see me. And, after all, my father is one of the most important generals around.” She rolls her eyes.

“This country is empty,” Hilda says after a quiet moment. “I don’t know how to express it, really. It feels like the stage for a play. You see the props, and the painted murals for the setting. When you look closely you see it’s not real.”

Sola doesn’t move, but for a slight moment, she thinks she can see something moving beyond the corner of her eye, something dark and sleek. It could have been a strand of her hair. It very well could have been, or it could have been a shadow, but she doesn’t know, and that’s much worse than knowing, even though part of her feels slightly uneasy at the idea of the shadows watching her at every single moment in her life, even if they are trying to help her.

“I understand,” Sola says. Not that she had entirely the same mindset, but that she can understand where Hilda is coming from, though their vantage points are both so different that it explains why they have come to such different conclusions. The shadows are real, and everything implied about them, even if nothing else here feels real to Hilda. Perhaps what Sola has seen and come to know is, like the sun and moon that inspired the powers that lie dormant in her, older than Amestris. She wonders why the shadows never came to Hilda. Perhaps soon she will understand. “I suppose it’s only fair enough for me to tell you, since I asked you to disclose your own thoughts.”

“Go ahead,” Hilda says. “Tell me what you want to do.” She sounds like she actually wants to hear it.

“Alchemy,” Sola says, as if the single word explains it all, and in a way, it does. It means she won’t be what the finishing school would have her be, and it means she won’t be living the rest of her days out in Gray Pond Town, where even the air doesn’t welcome her. She will not quietly retire into some rich man’s mansion and bear his children with his last name. She may not know exactly where she will go, but she knows where she won’t be. Perhaps she may have never realized this without the school.

Hilda smiles slowly. “Really,” she says, “do you have a teacher in mind? I’ve heard you have to find someone to be an apprentice to.”

“I’m…thinking of arrangements,” Sola says calmly.

“So are you planning on going into medicine or something of the sort?” Hilda asks. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t be content to be the perfect charm school graduate like we’re all expected.”

“Well, I don’t know about medicine,” Sola defers. “I’m sure I will find out, though. It will find me.” The sun moves behind a gray cloud, and the light cast into the windows dims. A shadow casts itself over the table. Sola inhales, and closes her eyes for a moment.

“I’m sure you will,” Hilda says. “I think you’ll be like me. When I leave, I’ll be gone.” Her voice is a firm command, as if she is saying this to the future, bending it to her will. Sola cannot disagree.

_

One night, the moon is just a sliver in the sky, casting barely any light. But when Sola wakes up to freezing cold, she knows the shadows are here again. She knows what she must do.

“I can draw the circles,” she whispers, in the unlikely case Massima may wake up. “I can draw them from memory, you see.” She reaches to the nightstand and opens the drawer to find a black pen, and rises from the bed, and walks towards the unused fireplace, which in the dark looks like a small cavern in the room. On the walls on each side, there are two unlit gas lanterns. On the nightstand, there is an electric lamp. But right now, the only light is from the small sliver of the moon shining inside. Sola kneels before the fireplace, her hands extending outwards before her. She draws the circle of the moon, the circle of the sun, one on each side right at the mouth of the fireplace. The pen circles through ash and old wood and powder and flakes of old paint. It smells old. Not like smoke or fire, but like disintegration, like dust. Sola can feel her heart beating. She knows her blood is very warm as she prepares for the transmutation, for a lighting up of the room that has never occurred, not even decades and decades ago.

Sola hears crackling, and a roar, and places her hands over her heart, and there is a flash of light, the brightest she’s ever seen in her life. She feels like when she was younger and would stand by the train as it soared by, she feels taken away. She is in the middle of the light, like her red dream. It is so beautiful to look upon, but she cannot help but close her eyes in rapture.

She dreams she is surrounded by light, the moon and sun both shining red in the sky.

_

Sola wakes up, her head pounding, but other than that, feeling relatively comforted in a soft bed with oddly cold sheets. She opens her eyes slowly, seeing what appears to be a hospital room. Nearby, there is a nurse in the room with her, and a curtain separating the two sides of the room. She assumes someone else must be on the other side.

I lived, she thinks, smiling to herself, I knew I could. “Oh,” the nurse says, noticing her eyes are open. “Don’t move too quickly.”

“I’m in the hospital?” she asks. The nurse nods and asks Sola if she knows what happened, and Sola says she doesn’t.

“At your school there seems to have been some kind of breakage in the gas pipes that caused an explosion,” the nurse says gently. “You will be fine. You don’t have any injuries, you’re just in shock.” There is a deep soberness in her face though, and Sola wonders how often this nurse sees people die. “I am sorry to tell you this,” she says, “but most of the other students and teachers have died.”

“Oh,” Sola says. She’d thought of this, but she also feels like she rushed into it so fast that it almost feels shoddily done, like she should have at least known who in particular would die. Like she should have been awake for it instead of knocked out. Massima may have died asleep, which wasn’t what she deserved, to be swept away into death like she was nothing, like she had never lived.

When Ingrid drowned Sola never looked away from her. They had been friends, after all. Sola didn’t have any other friends then. It was the least Ingrid deserved- acknowledgment.

“Your teacher Miss Cavendish is in the other bed in this room,” the nurse continues, her voice quiet. “But she is asleep right now. You’ll be released soon enough.”

“Thank you,” Sola tells her. Her head aches, and she hopes if she goes to sleep it will feel better when she wakes up. It’s been a while since she’s had a good, long sleep anyway.

There is no sense of time in the hospital room. Sola is in the bed next to the door and not the window, and since the curtain is shut to let Miss Cavendish sleep, she cannot see if it is day or night, only the ever-present unnatural lighting of the hospital corridor.

The curtain dividing the room casts a shadow, the way a tree casts shade. In the shadow, the air is flat. The window must be closed, because when the air starts cooling, the curtain does not move, and there is no breeze.

“Your boldness and dedication is certainly a credit to you, Sola,” the shadow says, waking her up gently. “Someone important is coming to meet with you soon. Don’t worry about being released. We’ll know where you are.”

“Who are you,” Sola whispers, not wanting Miss Cavendish to hear, or any of the nurses outside to catch her talking to what would look like nothing.

She feels a cold shadow on her forehead, almost the way the nurse checked her temperature. “I am Pride,” the shadow says, and then the air is back to normal, and he says no more.

_

Miss Cavendish, when she woke up, had taken Sola aside, crying softly, and embraced her, which was somewhat odd, but Sola did not stop her. “I’ve made reservations in a hotel,” she’d said, “for you and Hilda as well as myself. Feel free to stay as long as you can until you can make arrangements. I’m so sorry.”

Sola had nodded silently, realizing there must have been no one else left from the faculty, and that Miss Cavendish had taken the responsibility of Sola and Hilda’s welfare upon herself. That, she thought, was thoughtful, and her dedication to her students clearly wasn’t just dependent on how well her students could fit the image of the academy. But the mention of Hilda had so many questions running through her mind that she’d had to stop herself from asking them before Miss Cavendish could finish speaking.

“Hilda’s alive too?” Sola had asked tentatively. Miss Cavendish’s eyes shone like water in sunlight.

“You and her are the only surviving students,” Miss Cavendish had said gravely. “She’s in the hotel right now. Once we’re released, we’ll go there together.” 

“Of course,” Sola had said reassuringly. “Thank you so much.” Miss Cavendish had cried more, and Sola had thought there was nothing more that she could say, so she kept quiet.

She looks out the window-square of their door in the hospital, and waits. The air is not warm, or cool. It feels as sensationless as a forgotten dream.

_

Sola has nothing to her name, not even her own clothes- she is wearing a light blue dress Miss Cavendish had given to her. It’s a little long, but it mostly fits, and she expresses her thanks to her and her hope that she can one day repay her for the costs of that and the hotel room. She really does plan to have that ability soon, but doesn’t express that much to her bereaved teacher, whose leg is wrapped in bandages and a brace beneath her clothes. “I knew an old building like that wasn’t sustainable,” she keeps saying, as if to no one.

Many things, Sola thinks, are unsustainable by nature, regardless of their age.

“I’ll let you talk to Hilda. You’re sharing a room with her,” Miss Cavendish says as they get out of the elevator in the hotel and get to the door of the hotel room. “I need to use the telephone to contact my brother and tell him I’ve been released from the hospital.” She walks off as if she’s rushing, and Sola opens the door, slowly, wondering what she’ll see, what has become of Hilda.

When Sola opens the door, she immediately finds herself facing Hilda, who is sitting on the bed, unharmed, seemingly untouched. She does not even have any scratches or bruises on her the way Sola does on her face and back and arms- Hilda’s short sleeves and knee-length hemline show clear skin.

“Hey,” Hilda says, her voice strangely muted. Sola doesn’t think she’s ever heard Hilda like this, so stunned and subdued. Her unblinking, flat gaze is nonetheless unwavering. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t there. When it happened. I was out that night, with a friend. So that’s why. That’s why I’m alive right now.” Sola wonders if Hilda is expecting her to provide an explanation, and she realizes she’s still in the doorway when Hilda gestures her to come closer. Sola seats herself next to Hilda on the bed by the door.

“I lost consciousness,” Sola tells her. “I feel like I should have been awake for all of it. I know I couldn’t control whether or not I was awake but…I wish I had been able to.” Hilda nods soberly.

“I was with Massima when she died in the hospital,” Hilda says then, closing her eyes. “I just thought you should know. Since she was with you when it happened.”

“Was she conscious?” Sola asks. It would be very regrettable if Massima had never woken up, if she’d never known what was happening to her. Sola wonders how many of them never woke up. Despite what the shadows- Pride- had said, it almost feels like she’d been hasty, like she’d tried too hard to prove herself and rushed the job. When people die, it can sometimes be as if they never existed. That was so much of why Sola had wanted to leave Gray Pond Town. Living there was like living in a place where no one was really alive, where no one meant anything to the world. Like living in a sealed tomb. Sola wishes she’d at least gotten to look everyone in the eye and make them understand what was happening.

“She did wake up,” Hilda says. “She had lost so much blood she wasn’t going to make it no matter what they did. But she wasn’t alone.” Good, then, Sola thinks. Massima had someone to see her, see her go from life to death. But it’s not enough for either of them, she thinks, it will always be unfinished business, always something unresolved between them. 

“I know you were good friends, you all were, for much longer than I’ve known any of you,” Sola says then. “I know you must be going through a lot right now. You’re a very brave person, Hilda. I’m glad to know you, and I hope you can go forward and live the life you were meant to.”

Hilda looks Sola in the eye, turning her head. “Thank you,” Hilda says, still and calm as a sheet of ice on a clear winter day. “I will never forget you, Sola.” Hilda extends her hand to shake, and Sola extends her scraped hand. Through the window, the sunset shines through, its red and florid light filling the muted tones of the hotel room.

_

A spot on Sola’s forehead is cold, and she wakes up before her eyes can open and register her surroundings. The air isn’t cold, so it must not be the shadows, Pride. When she opens her eyes, she can make out, in the dark shadows and slight rays of moonlight, Hilda’s still face, her eyes narrow, her mouth a flat line. Sola realizes Hilda has put a gun to her head.

“What-” Sola begins indignantly, not even knowing how to respond. She supposes it makes sense if Hilda knows, or if she had known from the beginning. However, she hadn’t exactly expected her to find out, even if the fact that she was alone with the knowledge, except for Pride, seemed like she’d done it wrong. Perhaps she underestimated Hilda.

“You know what this is about,” Hilda says, her voice low, her knees each on either side of Sola’s torso, and the positioning strangely recalls the night at the Midnight Lounge. Sola raises her eyebrows.

“Do I,” she says. “Right now, what I know is, you’re holding a gun to my head. Are you going to kill me? Because if you were, maybe you would have done it by now. I’m awake now.”

Hilda shakes her head. “I don’t think you understand, Sola. I could. Do you know how many military suicides by firearm there are every year? They’re very common. I would know how to make it look like that.”

Sola shakes her head. “Where did you even get a gun? The school is in ruins.”

Hilda’s jaw tenses, and she inhales sharply. “I keep it in my purse at all times,” she says. “I had it on me when I was out.”

Sola supposes that makes enough sense. She lets a corner of her mouth go up in what looks like a smile. “Any more questions, Hilda, or did you come here just to get on top of me?” Hilda grits her teeth and spits in Sola’s face, which she certainly hadn’t expected. Sola takes a deep breath and licks the thick saliva off her lips, not allowing Hilda to think she’s intimidated her, even with the gun at her head. She doubts Hilda will use it. She would have by now. Which means she must want to talk about it.

“All right,” Sola says. “What do you know, and how do you know it? And feel free to put away the gun and get off me so we can converse about this normally.” Hilda doesn’t move, but it was worth a try, Sola supposes.

“Well,” Hilda says, “it could have been a pipe explosion. It was an old building. But it seemed to have started in your room, and you’re an alchemist. That’s what you’re interested in. That’s what you’ve gotten into. Which might not mean much. It’s not like I could have proven it was you. I told myself when I first saw, that it was just a bad feeling to ignore. Sometimes our gut instincts are right, but sometimes it’s just as easy to conflate your own biases with an instinct you can infer, you know?” Sola nods, then stops herself when she realizes this is a rhetorical question. Hilda continues. “I might have just told myself it was a coincidence, that it just looked odd, if I hadn’t been there when Massima died.” Sola admires how composed and strong Hilda is in this moment. She doesn’t think Hilda would appreciate hearing this right now, but that is nonetheless how she feels.

“Go on,” Sola says when Hilda says nothing, as if expecting her to speak. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Massima wasn’t really in a good state when she was dying,” Hilda says, her voice so low she sounds much older. “She sounded like she was raving, that was what the nurses said. They’d sedated her with a lot of drugs, and she wasn’t speaking very clearly. But I listened. She kept saying to me, evil eye, evil eye. Frantically, like she was trying to make me understand. And so I did. I remembered that night, in my room, when we were all together. When she said that about your eyes.” Hilda pauses for a moment. “Sola, what the hell did you do?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Sola says, sighing. “For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you what I can. Because that’s why you’re doing this, I think. Not because you’re going to kill me, even if you may think it’s what I deserve. You’re like me. You want to know.”

Hilda is still for a moment, but takes the gun away from Sola’s head, still though keeping it tightly gripped in her hand. 

“I drew the sun and the moon in transmutation circles. It’s what I do,” Sola explains, Hilda’s face silver and shadowed in the moonlight. She wonders if Pride is watching. “In order to create explosions. It’s…I don’t know how to express it to you. I think it’s beautiful. It makes me feel alive. That isn’t a sufficient explanation to you, I know.” She can’t say too much, she knows. “I needed to know that I could risk my own life.”

“What about everyone else’s,” Hilda says, not really a question, her voice almost soft.

“I wish I’d been awake. I admit that,” Sola says, “if you’ll believe me. I didn’t put enough thought into it, and acted in the moment. I would have been there, for Massima, if I could have. I should have looked her in the eyes as she died. There’s no sense in distancing myself from what I’ve done, trying to cut the connections I’ve made. I’m bound to her, to all of them now. In a way, even you, Hilda, we are bound to one another by death.” That’s what death does, she thinks, tie people together for eternity. She and Ingrid; the disappeared girls at Madame Antonia’s place; and now Sola and everyone at this school.

“You’re insane,” Hilda says, her voice a quiet realization. Perhaps Sola should have expected that.

“You wanted to know,” Sola says, “and I told you what I could.” She does deserve that much, Sola thinks; after all, Hilda could have been one of the dead, too.

Hilda nods in understanding, at least, of this. “I’m leaving. Now. I’m going far away from here, like I told you. I imagine you’ll do what you told me you’d do, too. You’ll truly become an alchemist.” Sola nods at her. Hilda gives a long, tired exhale as she gets off Sola’s bed, and Sola notices Hilda has a coat and shoes on. “I’m not going to kill you now,” Hilda says, looking Sola straight in the eyes. As it should be, she thinks. It is good that they can face one another. “But I can’t say what I’ll do if I ever see you again. I imagine this is mutual.”

“I suppose we’ll have to see,” Sola says. “Hilda, I want you to know I really do mean it when I say best of luck, though I don’t think you need it.”

“No, Sola, I don’t think I’m the one here who would need luck, but I don’t think I can say I wish it for you,” Hilda says, walking towards the door. She pauses as she opens it, the light from the hallway pouring into the room in a gold wave that makes Hilda’s shadow long and her hair shine. “Tell Miss Cavendish I said goodbye, and thank you.” And then she closes the door, and Sola supposes it will very likely be the last they ever see of one another. But if they ever see one another again- who knows what could happen? The possibility is, to say the least, exciting.

It takes her a while to get back to sleep, but eventually, she does.

_ 

In the morning, Sola wears her hair pulled back, a white hotel bathrobe over Miss Cavendish’s dress that she’d ended up sleeping in. She’s been thinking of what to do if her teacher comes to visit her, but mostly, she’s been waiting for Pride to say something. He hasn’t ever since the hospital, and it’s starting to concern her.

She looks out the hotel window at the busy street of North City. It is so loud outside, with people talking, cars and buses and trolleys going across the roads, sirens and alarms from ambulances and police vehicles, birds calling and dogs howling and bells ringing to mark the hour and even, from some places, music playing. It takes her by surprise, though, when she hears a knock, and she turns around and walks as quickly as she can to the door. She opens it, and sees not Miss Cavendish, wondering where Hilda could have gone, but a young man with fair hair wearing a bellboy’s uniform.

“Oh,” Sola says, “good morning. May I help you?” The young man smiles widely, in a manner that makes him look fierce, and Sola knows in that moment that this man is much more than he appears. She smiles. “You were sent to me, weren’t you,” she says. The man looks both ways as if checking to see if anyone’s looking, and then walks into her hotel room. She closes the door behind him, and then walks over to the window and closes the curtains.

“I don’t usually look like this,” he says. “Since we’re going to be working together, you should probably know what I look like.” Sola isn’t entirely sure what she’d expected, but she does think she must look rather stunned when the man transforms himself, in form and in shape and even his clothes, to a shorter person with long, dark green hair and black clothing. “My name is Envy,” says this new person, who is clearly not a hotel bellboy.

“Is that alchemy you’ve used?” Sola asks in fascination, noticing a symbol tattoo on Envy’s leg. It would be far more useful to have a tattoo on your hands for alchemy, she thinks.

Envy grins. “Oh, no, none of that. This is just natural to me. So, you’re Sola, the powerful alchemist?”

She smiles. “You flatter me,” she says, flustered by and unused to such praise.

Envy laughs then. “Oh, get real, princess,” he says, almost sarcastically, gesturing out with his thin arm. Sola can’t help but smile. “You are an alchemist. You’re just…newer at it, but it’s a good thing we’ve found you. Anyway,” Envy says, sitting on Hilda’s unmade bed, his feet dangling above the carpeted floor. “We should get going soon. Nothing’s keeping you, right?” he says, an assumption, not really a question.

“No,” Sola says, “nothing at all.” 

_

Underneath Sola’s elbow-length white satin gloves, her palms are warm with the feeling of her new tattoos. Part of it had been inspired by Envy’s tattoo, but really, Sola thinks she may not have had the idea without Hilda saying she brings her gun everywhere she goes. What use is being an alchemist, Sola thinks, if she can only do it when she has the means to create transmutation circles, rather than any time at all? Envy had agreed, which had been a good thing, because Sola didn’t want to ask too much.

He’d taken her to a man with a gold tooth named Doctor Grant, who apparently was a friend and associate of Envy, Pride, and their family. Homunculi- they do exist. Sola still isn’t entirely sure of everything about them. They’re old, they’re powerful, and they are willing to take her in and possibly do as much for her as she can do for them.

Doctor Grant had tattooed the moon and sun on her hands. “Amazing,” she’d said. “Thank you so much,” she’d said, looking back and forth to the Doctor and Envy, her hands splayed in front of her face, as she couldn’t take her eyes off them.

Now, Envy drives in the guise of the young blond man, this time in a plain black jacket rather than a bellboy’s uniform. He’s a surprisingly good driver, although Sola hasn’t been in many car rides and may not be the best judge. “So,” Envy says. “You told me you had an idea for getting funds, that you wanted to prove to us you could pull your weight. You’ve got guts, princess.”

“I do,” Sola says somberly, looking out the side window, her reflection in the glass. She is dressed for an evening out, the long white gloves, her hair in a Drachman-style braided crown, a silvery dress that reaches the floor with a slit that reaches her thigh. “If I’m to refine my alchemical skills and start a new life, I’d like to close the door on my old life. And have some of my own funds in the time being, before I find employment.” Of course, Envy had said if she manages to prove herself she’d certainly find an important job, but Sola doesn’t know how long that could take, what time means to someone whose concept of life is fundamentally different.

“I guess you really can’t judge by appearances. I wouldn’t think you came from Gray Pond Town,” Envy says, laughing as he drives forward carefully when the light is green. No, Sola thinks, you wouldn’t, would you, because no one ever leaves Gray Pond Town. “We’re almost there, I think,” Envy adds as the car drives down a road where most of the buildings are empty or boarded up.

It was so close by, Sola thinks, all along. If it disappeared into thin air, or if everyone in it did, like the people of Xerxes hundreds of years ago, hardly anyone would even notice. It would soon be completely forgotten.

_

Envy said he would have the car parked a few yards away from the building, but that he’d be close by, watching. He hadn’t explained how, which sparked questions in Sola’s mind, but she didn’t ask. She feels so alive, so indescribably alive, it’s all she can do to control herself by just walking in a straight line quietly to the front door of Madame Antonia’s sporting house. She isn’t afraid, she tells herself, even if she thinks there may just be a sliver of fear in her. That only means she’s taking the risk, which she knew she’d be doing every day for the rest of her life.

From the balcony, a few of the girls look down at her, impassively. None of them seem to say anything to each other, even if one of them cranes her head forward over the rail to get a better look.

Sola looks back at them, just for a moment. They are owed that much from her. She could have been one of them, living the rest of her life in this town. One of the girls will live out the rest of her life and die in a place that could have been Sola’s.

One of the Drachman bodyguards answers the door, looking her over suspiciously. “Good evening,” she says, keeping her voice soft, quiet enough to sound convincingly nervous. “I need to speak with Madame Antonia. Please.” She widens her eyes and looks in the man’s eyes, as if imploring her to do what she asks. Of course, he will. Madame Antonia wouldn’t pass up a chance to get a single cenz, her guards must know that as well as the girls do. He ushers her in silently.

Sola has never been inside Madame Antonia’s business. The ceilings are low, and there are many candles that smell of musk, to the point where the scent fills her nostrils invasively. Piano music plays on a radio. There are white flowers in glass vases everywhere, their natural scent drowned out by that of the candles. The cream-colored wallpaper seems to be made of some sort of silky fabric material. Sola waits on a white chaise lounge. There are a few girls passing through this sort of parlor area, but none of them pay much mind to her. A door opens slowly, and a relatively short woman in silver furs and a bad makeup job walks down the hall, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. Sola wonders if there’s a sight quite as unpleasant as a woman who has lost her looks as she sees Madame Antonia, coming directly her way.

“Madame,” Sola says meekly, looking at the ground. “Good evening.”

“Come on, girl,” Madame Antonia says, sounding almost bored. “If you have something to tell me, I’m a busy woman. Come to my office with me and we can discuss it.” Sola rises, making sure to get up quickly, like she’s worried about being left behind, and follows at Madame Antonia’s heels, like she doesn’t dare to walk at her side.

Madame Antonia keeps the door closed, but one of the guards stands outside, Sola notices. She supposes she can understand why she wouldn’t have her guard come in. It isn’t as if Sola looks like she could fit any concealed weapons on her. Or that she even looks like she’s about to fight. Anyone would look at her and think she looks intimidated and frightened, if they even bothered to look.

On the other side of Madame Antonia’s desk, Sola takes a seat quietly, and slowly raises her head so that the Madame can get a better look at her face. In a calmer tone than she had used before, Sola asks, “do you remember me, Madame?” The Madame reaches into a drawer and puts on a pair of glasses and then nods in recognition.

“Yes,” she says, “you’re that ticket girl. Jarmira’s pretty little daughter. No one’s heard from her since soon after you left, she left town the week after.” Sola does not react to this, but does wonder if her mother had known where her father was all along. “My, how you’ve grown up.”

Yes, Sola thinks, I have. 

“So you do remember,” Sola says. “My name is Sola. Sola Jarmira Kimblee. My mother was Jarmira Darshenko, and my father was Sergei Kimblee. You approached me multiple occasions, proposing that I come work for you.”

Madame Antonia smiles, bemused. “And have you decided to take me up on my offers?” She looks Sola up and down. “You may have to put on different gloves, in that case. Only my virgins wear white. Afterwards, they wear only silver or gray. You may have heard.” She’s heard and seen. Madame Antonia’s girls typically dress to fit the name of the neighborhood. Never anything else. One day, Sola thinks, when she has enough money to buy good clothing, she’ll never wear gray again.

Sola smiles. “Well. I’m not a virgin anymore, but that isn’t exactly why I came.” Madame Antonia raises her eyebrows.

“Well, don’t make me guess,” she says sternly. “I don’t take kindly to that kind of thing, you know.” Oh, I know, Sola thinks, I know very well, but I am not kind either.

“I have come because you have sufficient funds and I need some,” Sola says. “I’m a reasonable and understanding person, now. I’m not asking you for everything you have. I’m not asking you to go to your house, or to the bank. Just all the valuables and money in this building, which alone, I imagine, is a considerable fortune, certainly more than anyone in this neighborhood ever sees in their lifetime. But then, I don’t imagine you use the bank. No place in town is as securely guarded as here.”

The Madame stares her down. “You have to be kidding me,” she says, as if to herself. “Get out of here. I don’t have time for whatever this is.”

“No,” Sola says, standing up, taking off her white gloves and laying them on the desk. “You do. This isn’t a joke, or a negotiation. This is the only choice you have. It’s that or your life.” Madame Antonia stares at her in disbelief, and then rage. She presses a button on the wall, which apparently alerts one of her bodyguards, because the man that was stationed outside breaks down the door and grasps Sola in his thick, muscular arms.

“Throw the little bitch in the basement,” the Madame says, “she’s threatened to kill me and said she wants to rob the house. We can deal with her later. Make her think about it for a while.” Sola stays limp in the man’s arms rather than struggling, and manages to turn around to face him, and wrap her own arms around him. She grasps him as he looks at her in confusion, and back to the Madame. Sola wonders, noticing his silence, how well he speaks Amestrian, or if this house is just a place of silence for those who work for the Madame. Sola, her feet off the floor, wrests her hands to each side of the man’s face, as she had held Andreas, as the bodyguard’s arms grip her waist tightly and securely.

“I am going to kill you,” she whispers to him, in Drachman. He needs to understand. She needs him to. Her fingers dig into his head and she sees his eyes widen in horror and confusion, and she does not look away. She can feel his flesh against her tingling, tattooed palms, the elements that make up his body, shifting, moving between her fingers, and she feels the soft, warm flesh come apart in her hands, the sharp bone fragments flying between her fingertips, as he dies in her hands, and she lives in his arms, and the sensation and sound is so beautiful she cannot help but gasp as she slides to the floor along with the dead guard. His blood colors her hands, her arms, her chest and dress and hair and face.

“Now you see,” she rises from the floor, turning to Madame Antonia, who is still in shock. She hears one of the girls out in the parlor scream and run up the staircase, but she doesn’t turn around. “I’m an alchemist,” she says, showing her palms. “I won’t hesitate to do the same to you, if it comes to it, but I think it isn’t necessary. And I know you won’t think of calling the police. You don’t care about this man any more than you care about the girls who go missing. And you never contact the police for them, because you and them have a deal to stay out of each other’s way, and because if the police get involved then the military will get involved. And then it won’t be just a matter for Gray Pond Town anymore, it will be out of control, and your business will be shut down. So I could do anything I like, and you couldn’t do anything about it, not now.”

Madame Antonia steps backward. “Your mother was right to leave you. If you were my child, I would have left you, too. She should have thrown you in the pond to drown.” The irony of the statement makes Sola smile, just a little. She’s not Madame Antonia’s child, so the point is useless. But despite the Madame’s opinion, she’s reaching into her desk and gathering jewels and stacks of cash. And she looks Sola dead in the eye, this time, with nothing but contempt.

“This place is dying,” she says. “We both see that. I was born here, and so were you. We know this place well. We can both see that no one leaves, but no one comes here anymore, either. Soon, well within your lifetime, I’d say, this will be nothing but a ghost town. I know who I am and what I am, girl; I’m someone who’s kept myself thriving in this place, no matter what, with no apology. We can’t run from who we are. Right now, you’re nothing but an overdressed whore who thinks you’re something better than you are, trash from Gray Pond Town. And when this place ceases to exist, you won’t be anything at all.” Madame Antonia slides a mass of jewels and money across the desk, towards Sola’s stainless white gloves. “And by the way, girl, red isn’t your color. You looked better in gray.”

Sola wants to kill her in this moment, she really does. She despises this woman for looking down on her like this. Because if Sola had never heard the shadows speak to her in the night, she thinks there’s a good chance Madame Antonia would be absolutely right about her. She thinks if Gray Pond Town went up in flames this very second, she would weep, not in grief, but in something like spiritual fulfillment. “If I ever see you again, make no mistake, you’ll be longing for this place,” the Madame continues. “I’ll cut your tongue out and sell you to people far less lenient than I.”

“You know,” Sola says, raising her head, “If we meet again, I’ll hold you to that. I’ll have no respect for you if you don’t at least try. But if we see each other again, don’t think I won’t kill you.”

“You are a sick, unnatural girl,” Madame Antonia tells her, seething. Sola wonders if Madame Antonia truly believes it’s “natural” to send off young children, some as young as thirteen, to be molested by sexual predators, and make money off of it. Since she’s had such an easy time making a business of it, she probably does think it’s natural. The way of the world. Survival of the fittest. Well, Sola is more than fit to survive, and she’ll get that right through this woman’s head.

In your estimation, I may well be unnatural, thinks Sola; but out of all the girls in this town it’s me you couldn’t claim and profit off. Many others, but not me, and you’ll remember that until the day you die. 

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Sola says. “I’ll leave you now. I know you’re very busy. I am, too.” She gathers her riches, and holds them in her arms securely, and walks over the body of the dead guard as she makes her way through the parlor, her footsteps leaving red stains on the wood floor and white rugs, and she pushes the door open and goes out into the night.

_

Envy meets her outside, in his regular form, after she’d waited by the car for a moment too long for her liking, and he laughs ferociously, clapping her on her red-stained shoulder. Sola can’t help but smile. “The looks on their faces!” Envy cries out. “Shit, that was great! I knew you had it in you.”

“Thank you,” Sola says. It’s notable, she thinks, that someone as harsh as Envy expresses approval and fondness for her. “I’m grateful for all this, Envy, I truly am.” They walk back together to the car, and Envy opens the back door, telling her to throw it all on the backseats. She places it down gently.

Sola is quiet for a moment, but wants to ask- needs to ask- anyway. “Was Pride watching?” she says, wondering if Envy even wants to talk about Pride.

“No,” Envy says, “he’s busy.” Sola wonders what this means, if Envy’s congratulating her is hiding some sort of mistake.

“Oh,” Sola says, “I see.” Envy begins driving faster; there are hardly any traffic lights in Gray Pond Town. Sola recalls an old story she heard once, from the days of myth and legend. A town was destroyed, and only a single man and his family were spared by the town’s god. The man’s wife looked behind her, despite being commanded to not look back, and her god turned her to a pillar of salt as she faced the burning city. Sola hadn’t understood the significance of this. The woman wasn’t supposed to look back, and was punished for it just as the town was being punished, but why a pillar of salt? Would a fitting punishment not be to send her back to the dying town to perish along with it, if she truly could not bear to leave? It was not just that she looked back with her eyes, Sola remembers the story being explained to her, but with her desires. Sola has no such constraints. She would rather be turned into a pillar of salt, would rather die here and now, than ever have to go back to her old life in Gray Pond Town.

Sola looks behind her as Envy speeds up and Gray Pond Town vanishes into the dark, into the expanses of fields of dry grass and rusted metal parts and abandoned buildings that separate it from the rest of North City and its suburbs. There are no people out, she realizes. Perhaps it will be sooner than Madame Antonia expected, Sola thinks, when this town finally dies.

Pride saved her, she thinks, for a slight second. The thought unsettles her in its desperation, but it stays with her all the same. Perhaps because it is such an unsettling thought, it stays with her. 

“My sister Lust,” Envy says, with a degree of fondness in his voice, “every time something like this goes down, she always says the same thing.” He lowers his voice to a sensual, husky tone. “ _Humans are fools. They commit bloodshed, which begets bloodshed, and they hate, which begets hate. They are sad, foolish creatures_. She always says stuff like that, every single time. If she was here right now for this, she’d say the same thing.” Sola wonders what this says of her, or if Envy is merely relaying a story about his sister, which strikes Sola as not very different at all from the way human beings speak of their families.

“And what do you say?” Sola decides then to ask.

“Well,” Envy says, turning to her and smiling. “I’d say, I think you’re just beginning, and you’re never going back.”

“No,” Sola says, “I don’t think I ever will.”

She can look back, she thinks, but she’s never going back. Not to Gray Pond Town, not to school, not her old life, not the person she was once or could have been or would have been. So she looks forward, and sees the moon over the horizon; tonight, it is almost halfway full. She feels her palms, the moon and the sun, and raises them to her face, to lick the blood off of them, so the images can be seen in their wholeness. They are so beautiful, she thinks, and looks back up to the moon. It is late at night. She will stay up to see the sunrise, the sky blooming like a red flower. The world, she thinks, is an exquisite place, beyond anything she’d ever known until recently. She cannot wait to know even more.

_

Sola lies on the stretcher in Dr. Grant’s office within his own home, generously funded by his and Sola’s employers. The elderly doctor stands before her, and Envy stands at her side. Dr. Grant had been fired from the hospital he worked at decades and decades ago, but not for lack of skill, Sola had been reassured. She’d told Envy she could try and swallow the stone, but he and the doctor had insisted that at least for now, it be implanted in her stomach through surgery. She could asphyxiate on it, but more likely, she would be in danger of damaging her throat if she kept swallowing it and bringing it back up, and she needed to keep herself in good health if she was to be of use, which she couldn’t say she disagreed with.

She will bear the stone inside her. The stone and the souls inside of it have been entrusted to her, and she will sustain them, in her humble human body that can bring destruction with a touch of her hands. Perhaps the other side of destruction is not only creation, but preservation, she thinks, as she sees the stone glint a deep crimson in the brightly lit room.

She is twenty-two years old, living in a modest but elegant apartment in Central, and has just received her State Alchemist certification a few months ago. The Crimson Lotus Alchemist. A beautiful name for a beautiful young woman, she’d been told. But she likes it also because it expresses how the alchemy feels to her. It works far better than a plainer and more literal title, such as “Flame,” the rather unpoetic title of the alchemist who specializes in fire alchemy, a man she has not yet been acquainted with.

In Central, there are rumors about her. Things she doesn’t like to hear. Things that aren’t true, things that are true, things she knows she must remember. But there will always be rumors, she supposes, and she must live with it.

In the Ishvalan communities of the Amestrian cities, she is told that they call her a term with no direct counterpart in Amestrian, that roughly translates to The Wraith.

La Destructora, they call her in the war-torn borderlands of Aerugo. But also- La Roja. The Red One. They will never know how right they are. 

She doesn’t really have many friends, so Envy had come over to her place to drink in celebration with her. “And so I told my sister, and Gluttony, as if he cares,” he’d said theatrically, although from what Sola knows of Lust she didn’t suppose she’d care either, “then our human puts her hands together and practically blows up the whole room! And smoke was all over the place for an hour and even Wrath was coughing when he said she passed the exam! They should have seen it,” he’d said, back to her, “that shit was crazy!” he’d told her admiringly, though she’d protested, _don’t flatter me too much_. It’s always strange to hear him speak about his family. It almost seems to her that they’re much closer than she ever was to her own family, even to her father. “You humans are so weak, and _you_ are what, a hundred pounds, not even? It’s amazing you haven’t blown yourself up yet, let alone that you’ve come this far!”

She supposes everything really is amazing.

The Doctor looks down at her, his gold tooth glinting in the bright lights, with interest. But he is unlike other men- when he looks down at her exposed body lying down for surgery, it is a purely scientific interest. Most men, when they look at her, seem to undress her with her eyes. It has been this way for a long time, and she has to admit, she did learn a thing or two from Madame Antonia, because it was she, so long ago, who opened Sola’s eyes to this fact. It is something that can be dealt with. It means less suspicions. Once, it could have meant her doom; but now, with the stone in her body and the sun and moon on her palms, it will be theirs. Most men, in her experience, would not have any self-control if they were here before her now, which is just disappointing to her by now. This doctor’s mind is as different from others’ minds as hers is, which she supposes is why he is in the same place she is.

“Stay calm, you’re gonna be okay,” Envy reassures her, as if almost annoyed by anticipating a frightened reaction that he should know by now won’t come, at least not here and now, “it’s not as bad as it looks.” Sola turns her head and smiles at him. Sometimes she thinks on the inside he is very delicate, far more so than her, despite that she is a human and he believes that he is stronger than humans. Sometimes she wonders how he became this way. She could have never afforded to be like that- certainly his circumstances would not have been easy either.

“I’m not worried, Envy,” she says. The doctor’s scalpel opens up her stomach, a clean line in her flesh. So expertly done she barely feels anything. She smiles, facing the ceiling, the bright white ceiling, lit with the electric lights, slowly turning pink, then a deep and luxuriant red, as Envy brings out the stone, and hands it over to the Doctor. The light casts flickering red shadows on the ceiling, and maybe it’s just that Sola is wearing sheets and nothing else, but the coldness of the air feels as familiar as the moving shadows. Sheets white as a bridal gown, or the dress of a Gray Pond Town virgin, ready for the taking. Or even the garb of one of the ancient priestesses of Xerxes, who wore white robes in dedication to the hearth-goddess. This hospital stretcher, her bridal bed; this procedure, a consummation. 

This, Sola feels. She thinks she can feel the stone even before it enters her body. She gasps in almost disbelieving elation as the philosopher’s stone enters her body, her back arching, her shoulders rising from the stretcher; she doesn’t even care that the sheets fall away from her body. The souls whisper, just so loudly that she can hear it, that she can feel the force of the sounds inside of her. _Help me_ , some say. Some scream. Some cry out, _Mother_.

The feeling of the stone inside of her reverberates through her whole body, through her nerves and tendons and veins. It’s so overwhelming that for a few moments all she can do is lie down and _feel_. Her eyes flicker, and snap open, unblinking, flowing with water. Her whole body is warm, and she can feel every thrum and movement from her head to her toes, from the inside of her stomach to the hairs growing from her flesh. The stone, and its energy with it, radiate from her opened stomach, and when she looks down, she can see the barest hint of a red nimbus around her midsection. Her whole body shivers and she feels herself weeping in ecstasy, her palms facing upwards as she feels her pulse in her hands. 

Doctor Grant begins to stitch her stomach, and she barely feels it. “The procedure is a success,” the Doctor says, “it’s amazing that a human body can handle it.” She doesn’t acknowledge him. But if she can handle it, when it would be more likely for her to be unable to, it must be what she was meant to do. There was never anything else that could have happened. This is who she is.

Inside of Sola’s abdomen, the stone is alive and glowing and strong, the susurrations of the voices inside of it echoing through her in a chorus of whispers. So many souls, so many lives that she now bears inside of her. Perhaps it is just the rush of the moment, but she can almost feel the air on her forehead cooling, as if someone is laying a shadowed hand on her face. She smiles, and closes her eyes, and everything behind her eyelids is red.


End file.
